Journalist charged with defaming Uzbeks, faces 8 years jail

New York, January 22, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on the Uzbek authorities to immediately drop all charges against Umida Akhmedova, a prominent photojournalist and documentary filmmaker who covers gender, ethnic, and cultural issues, and allow her to continue to do her work without fear of reprisal.

On January 13, investigators with the city police department
in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent,
criminally charged Akhmedova with insulting and libeling the Uzbek people and its
traditions through her work, according to international news reports. On
Thursday, investigators informed Akhmedova’s lawyer that they had concluded their
probe and the case will be transferred to court in the next few days, Akhmedova
told CPJ. If convicted on both charges, she could serve up to eight years in
jail. Akhmedova is prohibited from leaving the country, she told CPJ.

According to the independent regional news Web site Ferghana, the
charges stem from a 2007 album of photographs depicting life in Uzbek villages
and a 2008 documentary on the traditional ban on premarital sex. Both were
produced with support by the Swiss Embassy in Tashkent, Akhmedova told CPJ. In the album, titled
“Women and Men: From Dawn to Dusk,” Akhmedova showed men, women, and children
in their daily routine and during traditional rituals. Her documentary—The Burden of Virginity—criticizes the
pressure on young women in Uzbekistan
to practice abstinence until marriage.

“We call on the authorities in Tashkent to drop the absurd charges against
Umida Akhmedova at once,” said CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova. “It is unthinkable that a
documentarian should go to prison because the state interprets her work as
insulting.”

The indictment, obtained by CPJ, and signed by Tashkent police
investigator K. Kh. Akbarov, said that results of a “complex expert review”
of Akhmedova’s work revealed that “with her unscientific, unsound, and
inappropriate comments, which contain hidden implications, are directed at
discrediting values and traditions of our people, and hold negative information
that can affect moral and psychological conditions of the youth”—she insulted
“traditions of the Uzbek people, which is viewed as defamation, scornful, and
disrespectful attitude towards national traditions.”

According to Ferghana, in
mid-November, Akhmedova learned that a criminal case concerning her work was
filed by Uzbekistan’s
State Agency for Press and Information, a government media regulator. Investigator
Nodir Akhmadzhanov with the Mirabad District Police Department in Tashkent called and asked
her to come and testify as a witness in the case. After the visit, Akhmedova
told Ferghana she was perplexed at
the authorities’ claims. She said Akhmadzhanov was unable to answer her
question how the visual depiction of traditions could defame an entire nation.
A month later, the same investigator told Akhmedova that, as an author of the
documentary and album, she was no longer a witness in the criminal case but has
been upgraded to a suspect; he suggested that she seek a lawyer, Ferghana reported.

In their conclusion, the state-sponsored panel of experts who
reviewed Akhmedova’s work said it left a negative impression on viewers unfamiliar
with Uzbek traditions, Ferghana reported:
“Looking at the pictures, a foreigner who had not seen Uzbekistan comes to the conclusion
that this is a country where people live in the Middle Ages. The author
intentionally focuses on life’s hardships.”

Akhmedova deems the charges against her unsubstantiated but
told CPJ she feared for her subjects. “I am not scared of being prosecuted but
hope they will spare the people I have documented and worked with,” Akhmedova
told CPJ.

Akhmedova is the author of several documentaries on Uzbekistan; her
photos have been shown in exhibitions at home and abroad. She is the first
female documentary filmmaker in Uzbekistan,
the regional press reported. See a slide show of her work on the CPJ Blog.